Books that would be better with explosions.

So on Friday Miranda posted about how much she loves love. Like, she loves love in contemporary stories and she loves love in dystopian and fantasy stories but mostly she loves love in realistic stories. And of course, I was all like, oh Miranda, what book ISN'T better with an explosion? Because, you know, love is great and all, but explosions are kinda where it's at. And you know what? THAT MIRANDA NEVER ANSWERED. So here, for you (and Miranda), I present a very short list of books that would be better with explosions.

1. ROMEO & JULIET. I mean, we all already know what happens in ROMEO & JULIET. There are no surprises when you get to Freshman English and your teacher hands out Dover Thrift editions to the entire class and you are all like, oh, hey, star-crossed lovers. BUT, what if the Capulets were all, check it out, we have TNT! And ILLEGAL FIREWORKS FROM OVER THE COUNTY LINE! Yeah, violence never solved anything, but it's perhaps more entertaining (and, weirdly, a lot less macabre) then the age-old tale of double suicide in the name of romance.

2. MOBY DICK. Okay so I haven't read this book in, well, forever so I think there might actually be an explosion somewhere in its later chapters, but as you might remember I am of the PLEASE JUST MAKE IT STOP contingency when it comes to Melville. So I'm thinking that if the boat exploded and the whale exploded and Ishmael exploded and everything exploded in, say, chapter 2, okay, yeah. I think I'd read that book. All 20 pages of it.

3. EVERYONE POOPS. Just kidding. This might be the only book that wouldn't be improved by an explosion.

3. BLUBBER. Okay, we all know how I feel about THE JUDY, right? I love her and want to be her and think she's like sort of maybe a demigod. But here's the thing, imagine if BLUBBER were more like CARRIE. And, yeah, I know the mean girl gets her just desserts in this book, but what if the girl getting picked on could SHOOT LASERS FROM HER EYES. That'll learn some mean kids real fast, no? Or, you know, at least make for an EXPLOSIVE plot twist. Like, edge of your seat stuff. Think about it, THE JUDY. Dystopian robot girl BLUBBER could be your next bestseller.

4. BLUEBERRIES FOR SAL. Oh how I love Robert McClosky. And in this classic tale of a girl picking blueberries with her mom, and a bear cub doing the same, there is just so much cute and sweet you sort of, well, explode. But picture this: the bears are not bears but aliens. And they do not want Sal near the blueberries that they have travelled LIGHT YEARS to collect as data. So the BEAR ALIENS go on the offensive. Yeah, Sal. You had better take your pail and run, because it's about to get epic up in here. Fire and brimstone style.

5. TWILIGHT. Hey, I'm not knocking it. I read all four door-stop volumes. But I'm just saying. Wouldn't TWILIGHT be better if something BLEW UP? I know, I know, there's that car accident where Bella ALMOST DIES and Edward is all TO THE RESCUE but it's not an explosion. There is no fire. No debris propelled at high speed into someone's eyeballs. I seriously think Meyer should look into incorporating explosions into her next work of fiction. I think that, maybe, if there had been an explosion, Jacob would have had a chance. And as a member of Team Jacob, I'm totally into that. I mean, Edward would have a hard time rescuing Bella from EXPLOSIVE FIRE, since, you know, fire kills vampires. Jacob would just get sexy scars from the ordeal. WIN.

So there you go. Five books that would be better with EXPLOSIONS. Not that I endorse violence. No, actually, I do. Just, you know, IN FICTION.

What books do you think would be better if stuff blew up? Tell me in the comments! TELL ME!

It's Almost Here...

Next Monday (July 19) is our spectacular-spooktacular awesome-strvaganze relaunch week! We're teaming up with YA-5 team member Georgia McBride's YALITCHAT site and weekly Twitter chat event to help bring you Halloween in July (all the spooky fun, none of the creepy house that hands out boxes of raisins).

We'll have author interviews (Michelle Zink! Heather Brewer! Claudia Gray! Nancy Holder!), a guest blogger (real life Goth princess Amber Skye), and a whole lot of fun (maybe even some contests and fab prizes).  So stop in, drop in, or ride your broom, and we'll see you on Monday!

Over It

I don’t know about you guys, but about ten minutes into a fad I’m completely over it. Done. Don’t want to hear another word about it. Which makes it extremely painful and agonizing when the fad just doesn’t seem to want to die.

My outlet? Complaining.

So here is a list of things that I’m completely over:

1. The emo vampire: I like vampires. I do. But I can’t stand the vampire boy (or girl) who slinks through three hundred pages bemoaning their porcelain skin and penchant for ripping out people’s throats. I want my vampires to glory in the killing with a wicked grin, like Damon from the Vampire Diaries. Look, people, you are a vampire. You are probably super strong and maybe have some other crazy abilities that will vary depending on the series. Still. You are bad ass. Act like it.

2. Girls who break up only to find another Mr. Right Now: I’ve read a couple of books recently about girls who are dumped/cheated on by their boyfriends. They spend the rest of the book not getting over it until they meet another sparkly boy who catches their attention. Look, getting dumped sucks. It hurts. But dating a new guy does not erase that pain. And what’s with all of the doormat girls in YA? Ladies, you don’t have to wait until the last two chapters of the book to actually do something about your situation.

3. Dystopian: as much as I love the genre, I’m starting to get a little burned out on the pretty-on-the-surface-seriously-corrupt-underneath dystopian novel. Maybe it’s because so many other authors have done it well that I don't have a lot of patience for new series.  And it’s not entirely believable that one person would try to change the world, (although I’m willing to suspend disbelief for Katniss, at least for one more book). Most of us are perfectly happy to just float along and hope no one notices us. Why aren’t there more of those characters in dystopian novels?

4. The twenty book series with a cliffhanger at the end of each book: Seriously? Nothing tees me off quicker than getting to the last page and seeing that of the twenty loose threads in the story maybe, MAYBE, one has been resolved. And oh, by the way, the next book doesn’t come out until NEXT YEAR. *head desk* Come on, can we at least get our characters to a good ending spot so that we know they aren’t going to die? That would be great, thanks.

5. The Justin Beiber/Jonas Brothers War: Okay, this has nothing to do with books, but I am a little tired of this whole thing. Trust me, in ten years they will all be doing specials on VH1 talking about how it was “such a surprise” when they became famous and how it eventually got to be “a little overwhelming” towards the end (right before their popularity faded). Don’t believe me? Google any one of the following:

98 Degrees

New Kids One the Block

Leif Garrett

Backstreet Boys

N*Sync (although Justin Timberlake may be the exception)

So that’s my list. What are you completely over? Lists about things that other people hate? Shapeshifters? Paranormal in general? Leave your thoughts after the beep.

*BEEP*

When Life Imitates Art

If you haven't been living under a rock you've probably heard about the major oil spill in the gulf (how's that "going green" campaign working now, BP?) and how it might just be the worst environmental disaster EVAR (dum dum DUM!).  While that's all good and depressing, the really important part is that this echoes a scene in a book almost exactly.

How creepy is that?

In M.T. Anderson's book Feed (a must read if you haven't already) one of the precipitating events is a major oil spill.  Not that the Gulf of Mexico spill is the first oil spill to ever happen, but there is something eerie about an event in real life happening after reading it in a book.  So, that of course got my little brain to thinking...what books would I never, ever, ever want to come true?  I came up with the following:

1.  The Hunger Games series (Suzanne Collins):  You know that part at the beginning of the games where like four people bite it in the first few minutes?  Yeah, that would be me.  I'm not very fast, and I'm not very strong, and I can't use any weapons. My face would most definitely be in the sky after the first day, and Katniss probably wouldn't even know my name *sniff*.

2.  The Last Survivors books (Susan Beth Pfeffer):  What's worse than a free for all to the death?  The moon.  Seriously.  In these books the moon is hit by an asteroid and forced closer to the Earth, setting off a series of tidal waves, earthquakes, and every other natural disaster you can think of.  The survivors try to eek out an existence, but how do you live in a world gone wrong?  Answer: not very well!

3.  The Forest of Hands and Teeth (Carrie Ryan):  ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE!  Enough said.

So, I guess the question is, what book would you NOT want life to imitate?

Rate This Book

I'm not a big fan of censorship.  I tend to think that people can self-censor, that is, if they don't like something just put it down (in the case of a book) or turn it off (in the case of everything else).  Whenever someone brings up the tired "But what about the children?!?" I usually snicker and say that's what parents are for.  Adults should try to censor what their kids are exposed to until the kids are smart enough to sneak around and do it without getting caught.

Not that I advocate sneaking around, but that's how it usually goes, so whatever.

But last week I had an event happen that got me thinking about censorship, and what it might mean to writers in the future.

The incident was at my local library.  I was checking out two books:  Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan and Blood Promise by Richelle Mead.  As I checked the books out the librarian looked at me and said "We don't recommend this book for children younger than fourteen."  Because I was totally checking the books out for a little kid, not myself.

Yeah, right.

Anyway I nodded, thinking she was talking about Will Grayson, Will Grayson.  I live in a pretty conservative area, so censorship isn't unexpected, especially if the g-word is involved (and I don't mean grape).  But then I realized she was talking about Blood Promise.

Huh?

If you haven't read the book I won't spoil it for you, but let's just say if it were a movie Blood Promise would get at most a PG-13.  Will Grayson, Will Grayson, while amazing, starts swearing on the second page.  How does kissing compare to liberal use of the f-bomb?

I don't know, but it makes me wonder why the warning for the Richelle Mead book and not for the Green/Levithan.  Maybe it's because Blood Promise has been out longer than Will Grayson, Will Grayson.  Maybe kissing is more offensive than cussing.  More importantly, who gets to decide, and why?

I am firmly anti-rating and pro-chucking the book across the room in disgust if it offends.  But how do you feel?  Do you want warnings on your book like the recording industry (warning: this book is chock full o' awesome)?  Or are the age ranges usually posted above the UPC enough (note:  not all books have these age ranges)?  Our is this just another way adults try to control what everyone under the age of eighteen does?

Does anyone even care as long as Rose and Dimitri end up happily ever after?

Leave your angry ramblings after the beep.  :)

BEEP!

My TBR Pile is Trying to Kill Me

Don't move too quickly.  If you do it'll know you're watching, and then we're all doomed.  What am I talking about?  My TBR pile.

What is a TBR pile?  It's an affectionate shortening of the term To-Be-Read Pile.  You know that stack of books you keep around to read when there's nothing else occupying your attention?  Well, I've recently learned the hard way that pile can be DEADLY!

Although I have a Kindle that I am madly in love with, I still buy regular books as well.  Why?  Well, sometimes new release books just aren't available in electronic format for awhile (ahem, I'm looking at you Egmont, and you, too, Scholastic).  So I buy the books when I see them because, well, I have zero patience.

But back to the TBR Pile trying to kill me.

I had just walked into the room where I store my TBRs, a room affectionately referred to as the fish tank room in my house (it has a fish tank, duh) when the attack happened.  I was reaching up to grab a book from the shelf (a borrowed book, not even one I owned) when the pile attacked.  Twenty books, stacked haphazardly (I'm not the neatest person in the world) all came crashing down upon my head!

But that's not the worst part.  That was the SMALL pile!  That pile upset a larger pile of about thirty books, which knocked over a stack of library books I was supposed to return.  Al of these books came crashing down off of a high shelf onto my enormous head.

The Knife of Never Letting Go

If I Stay

An Abundance of Katherines

Soulless

Need

Leviathan

City of Bones (hey, I didn't know I had that)

Compound

...all came crashing down onto my head. 

I screamed in dismay, not because I was about to be killed by several dead trees pressed into attractive pages (This is why you should embrace the ebook, people!!!  Trees are evil!!!) but because my lovelies were falling onto the floor.  Noooo!!!!  My Precious!!!  OH THE HUMANITY!!!!

Gasp, gasp, gasp.

It wasn't until the dust had cleared and I had a knot on my head (well played, Incarceron, well played) that I realized my TBR pile was trying to kill me. 

I wasn't sure why my TBR pile would try to kill me, but then it slowly dawned on me:  I have too many books in my TBR pile.  How many books does the average person keep on hand?  I have about fifty.  Partly because I buy almost every book that looks even a little good, and partly because I have a real, serious problem:

Not enough time.

I'm not mad at the books, though.  The way I see it, it was most likely a cry for help (why do you need those books from the library, you have US), and I have learned my lesson. 

Less stacking of my books on high shelves.  Oh, and no more buying new books until I read the ones I already have.

Unless it's for the Kindle.  My Kindle still loves me (so many samples....pretty, pretty books...)

So...what's in your TBR pile???